Having the "Best Military" Is Not Always a Good Thing

Reclaiming Our Citizen-Soldier Heritage
By William J. Astore

When did American troops become "warfighters" -- members of "Generation Kill" -- instead of citizen-soldiers? And when did we become so proud of declaring our military to be "the world's best"? These are neither frivolous nor rhetorical questions. Open up any national defense publication today and you can't miss the ads from defense contractors, all eagerly touting the ways they "serve" America's "warfighters." Listen to the politicians, and you'll hear the obligatory incantation about our military being "the world's best."

All this is, by now, so often repeated -- so eagerly accepted -- that few of us seem to recall how against the American grain it really is. If anything -- and I saw this in studying German military history -- it's far more in keeping with the bellicose traditions and bumptious rhetoric of Imperial Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II than of an American republic that began its march to independence with patriotic Minutemen in revolt against King George.

So consider this a modest proposal from a retired citizen-airman: A small but meaningful act against the creeping militarism of the Bush years would be to collectively repudiate our "world's best warfighter" rhetoric and re-embrace instead a tradition of reluctant but resolute citizen-soldiers.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174957

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The New New Yorker

 

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The White House wins a disturbing legal victory

The Bush administration has been a waging a fierce battle for the power to lock people up indefinitely simply on the president's say-so. It scored a disturbing victory last week when a federal appeals court ruled that it could continue to detain Ali al-Marri, who has been held for more than five years as an enemy combatant. The decision gives the president sweeping power to deprive anyone - citizens as well as noncitizens - of their freedom. The Supreme Court should reverse this terrible ruling.

Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar legally residing in the United States, was initially arrested in his home in Peoria, Illinois, on ordinary criminal charges, then imprisoned by military authorities.

The government, which says he has ties to Al Qaeda, designated him an enemy combatant, even though it never alleged that he was in an army or carried arms on a battlefield. He was held on the basis of extremely thin hearsay evidence.

Last year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia, declared that the government could not hold al-Marri, or any other civilian, simply on the president's orders. If it wanted to prosecute him, the court ruled, it could do so in the civilian court system.

That was the right answer. Unfortunately, last week the full 4th Circuit reversed the decision, and with a tangle of difficult-to-decipher opinions, upheld the government's right to hold al-Marri indefinitely. The court ruled that al-Marri must be given greater rights to challenge his detention. But this part of the decision is weak, and he is unlikely to get the sort of procedural protections necessary to ensure that justice is done.

The implications are breathtaking. The designation "enemy combatant," which should apply only to people captured on a battlefield, can now be applied to people detained inside the United States. Even though al-Marri is not a U.S. citizen, the court's reasoning appears to apply equally to citizens.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/20/opinion/edmarri.php

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One more good reason to lift the embargo on Cuba

Let's seize the potential of the nation's sugar-based ethanol -- before China beats us to it.

By Joe Conason

Sugar cane is harvested in Quivicán, south of Havana, Cuba, April 4, 2008.

Listening to the mouthpieces of the oil industry on talk radio and cable television -- as well as in the Bush White House -- one gets the impression that we must start drilling in America's coastal waters immediately. If only we unleash the oilmen to explore and exploit, then the price of gasoline will start to fall, the scheming petroleum cartel will collapse, and the United States will be independent once again. And if we don't unleash the oilmen, then the Chinese communists will siphon off all the oil from the coast of Cuba before we can even launch a rowboat into the Caribbean.

None of that is true, of course. Producing oil from new offshore wells requires decades, and even when those resources come online they will have little impact on world prices, according to the government's own studies. Fouling our shores with clots of tar will bring us no closer to freedom from foreign oil in the near, medium or long term.

And that tale about the Chinese drilling off Cuba is a hoax designed to gull the public into supporting the repeal of laws that restrict offshore drilling. But the phony Cuban oil story raises a pertinent question. If we really want to free ourselves from the death grip of the oil-exporting countries, maybe we should lift the embargo on trade and investment in Cuba.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/07/18/cuba/

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Fear not, I'll save you

 

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The Myth of a Toss-up Election

by Alan Abramowitz, Thomas E. Mann and Larry J. Sabat

"Too close to call." "Within the margin of error." "A statistical dead heat." If you've been following news coverage of the 2008 presidential election, you're probably familiar with these phrases. Media commentary on the presidential horserace, reflecting the results of a series of new national polls, has strained to make a case for a hotly contested election that is essentially up for grabs.

Signs of Barack Obama's weaknesses allegedly abound. The huge generic Democratic Party advantage is not reflected in the McCain-Obama pairings in national polls. Why, according to the constant refrain, hasn't Obama put this election away? A large number of Clinton supporters in the primaries refuse to commit to Obama. White working class and senior voters tilt decidedly to McCain. Racial resentment limits Obama's support among these two critical voting blocs. Enthusiasm among young voters and African-Americans, two groups strongly attracted to Obama, is waning. McCain is widely seen as better prepared to step up to the responsibilities of commander-in-chief. Blah, blah, blah.

While no election outcome is guaranteed and McCain's prospects could improve over the next three and a half months, virtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed - historical patterns, structural features of this election cycle, and national and state polls conducted over the last several months - points to a comfortable Obama/Democratic party victory in November. Trumpeting this race as a toss-up, almost certain to produce another nail-biter finish, distorts the evidence and does a disservice to readers and viewers who rely upon such punditry.

Consider the following.

Except for a few days when the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls showed a tie, Barack Obama has led John McCain in every national poll in the past two months. Obama's average margin has consistently been in the 4-6 point range during this time. By contrast, the polls in 2000 and 2004 showed much more variation over time.

State polling data have also consistently given Obama the advantage. According to realclearpolitics.com, Obama is currently leading in 26 states and the District of Columbia with a total of 322 electoral votes; McCain is currently leading in 24 states with a total of 216 electoral votes. Obama is leading in every state carried by John Kerry in 2004 along with seven states carried by George Bush: Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado.

Obama is leading in 11 of the 12 swing states that were decided by a margin of five points or less in 2004 including five of the six that were carried by George Bush. And while Obama has a comfortable lead in every state that John Kerry won by a margin of more than five points in 2004, McCain is in a difficult battle in a number of states that Bush carried by a margin of more than five points including such solidly red states as Indiana, Montana, North Dakota, Virginia, and North Carolina.

And remember these June and July polls may well understate Obama's eventual margin.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-abramowitz-thomas-e-mann-and-larry-j-sabato/the-myth-of-a-toss-up-ele_b_113827.html

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3 women to be ordained Catholic priests in Boston

 

Excommunication automatic, church warns

 

By Michael Paulson

 

Three aspiring Catholic priests will be anointed and prayed over this weekend in an ordination liturgy that will resemble the traditional in most ways but one: The three being ordained are women.

The ordination ceremony Sunday, at a historic Protestant church in the Back Bay, is the first such event to take place in Boston, one of the most Catholic cities in the nation.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, in accord with Vatican teaching, says the participants in the ordination ceremony will be automatically excommunicating themselves.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/07/18/3_women_to_be_ordained_catholic_priests_in_boston/

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Fantastic Contraption show and book

 

Device is a new art gallery in La Jolla, California created by sculptor Greg Brotherton and his wife Amy. Their next show, Fantastic Contraption, opens July 19 (and runs through Sept. 2). The 18-artist show explores the leaky margins between humans and their machinery and includes some of my favorites: Stephane Halleux, Nemo Gould, Theo Kamecke, and Mike Libby (all of whom have appeared here on Make: Blog).

IDW Publishing has produced Device Volume 1: Fantastic Contraption, a gorgeous art book, to accompany the show. I was thrilled and honored to be asked to write the introduction for it.

The book is 140 full-color pages, sells for $20 ($13.60 on Amazon), and is available for pre-order now.

More:

• Robots and curios from Stephane Halleux
• The kinetic, robotic sculptures of Nemo Gould
• Theo Kamecke - Circuitry sculpture
• Mike Libby's Insect Lab

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Flower power/acid house mashup album

Simon sez, "We did a free Summer of Love mashup compilation/album to tribute the first (1968) and the second (1988) Summer of Love revolutions in one. So we mashed Flower Power hits with acid house and rave stuff. As a bonus each artist created a custum vintage VW Bus paper model and we give them away in a handy print ready pdf file. The Summer of Love 2008 is a featured torrent in the Mininova so its ultra fast. There is a wacky alternate download as well, plus straming and track by track download too. Fans can find an empty VW bus sablon in the pdf so they can design their own bus and send it to us, we will post them in a gallery at the WHA!? site."

 

 Link

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Death of Free Internet is Imminent

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

Canada Will Become Test Case By Kevin Parkinson 21/07/08 "Global Research" -- - In the last 15 years or so, as a society we have had access to more information than ever before in modern history because of the Internet. There are approximately 1 billion Internet users in the world B and any one of these users can theoretically communicate in real time with any other on the planet. The Internet has been the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century by far, and has been recognized as such by the global community. The free transfer of information, uncensored, unlimited and untainted, still seems to be a dream when you think about it.  Whatever field that is mentioned- education, commerce, government, news, entertainment, politics and countless other areas-  have been radically affected by the introduction of the Internet. And mostly, it's good news, except when poor judgements are made and people are taken advantage of. Scrutiny and oversight are needed, especially where children are involved. However, when there are potential profits open to a corporation, the needs of society don't count. Take the recent case in Canada with the behemoths, Telus and Rogers rolling out a charge for text messaging without any warning to the public. It was an arrogant and risky move for the telecommunications giants because it backfired. People actually used Internet technology to deliver a loud and clear message to these companies and that was to scrap the extra charge. The people used the power of the Internet against the big boys and the little guys won.   However, the issue of text messaging is just a tiny blip on the radar screens of Telus and another company, Bell Canada, the two largest Internet Service Providers (ISP'S) in Canada. Our country is being used as a test case to drastically change the delivery of Internet service forever. The change will be so radical that it has the potential to send us back to the horse and buggy days of information sharing and access.

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Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

(Photo: Bill Moyers Journal)

    Once again we're closing the barn door after the horse is out and gone. In Washington, the Federal Reserve has finally acted to stop some of the predatory lending that exploited people's need for money. And like Rip Van Winkle, Congress is finally waking up from a long doze under the warm sun of laissez-faire economics. That's French for turning off the alarm until the burglars have made their getaway.

    Philosophy is one reason we do this to ourselves; when you worship market forces as if they were the gods of Olympus, then the gods can do no wrong - until, of course, they prove to be human. Then we realize we should have listened to our inner agnostic and not been so reverent in the first place.

    But we also get into these terrible dilemmas - where the big guys step all over everyone else and the victims are required to pay the hospital bills - because we refuse to recognize the connection between money and politics. This is the great denial in democracy that may ultimately mean our ruin. We just don't seem able to see or accept the fact that money drives policy. It's no wonder that Congress and the White House have been looking the other way as the predators picked the pockets of unsuspecting debtors. Mega banking and investment firms have been some of the biggest providers of the cash vital to keeping incumbents in office. There isn't much appetite for biting - or regulating - the manicured hand that feeds them.

    Guess who gave the most money to candidates in this 2007-08 federal election cycle? That's right, the financial services and real estate industries. They stuffed nearly $250 million into the candidate coffers.

http://www.truthout.org/article/mothers-milk-politics-turns-sour

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Early 20th c. George Eastman House photos now on Flickr

Posted by Xeni Jardin | permalink

The 1910 autochrome of medieval cosplayers, cropped above, and the monkey-on-a-rhino gelatin print below are in a set of early 20th century photographs from The George Eastman House, which has joined the flickr commons. I spotted this on photographer Raul Gutierrez' blog (a regular source of joy for me), and there he wrote:

Flickr Commons is a fantastic idea. My wish is that the whole thing could be taken further. Imagine an open source version of flickr dedicated to showing artwork and photography from public institutions in which users had the opportunity to contribute scholarly work or to group images into collections.

George Eastman House's photostream [Flickr]

I also loved this photo of Egyptian women in beautiful dresses; a woman in a fur throw with a corsage, and this stunning, simple portrait. Also, baby rhinos!

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Three reporters shot at anti-gun campaign press conference

by David Pescovitz

At a press conference held in Nanchong, China about the success of anti-gun campaign, three news reporters were shot. A police office was holding up a homebrew gun when it accidentally fired. From the BBC News:

A reporter needed surgery for injuries to his ankle, crotch and chest, after being hit by what appeared to be pebbles fired by the gun. Two others were slightly injured in the incident...

According to the Chongqing Times, the home-made gun had been designed for shooting birds.

Shooting at gun control conference

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Water on the Brain

Author Elizabeth Royte chats about the bottled-water boom and backlash

By Michelle Nijhuis

 

Journalist Elizabeth Royte drinks tap water, but she spends a lot of time thinking about the bottled kind. In her new book, Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, Royte investigates the causes and consequences of the bottled-water industry's astounding growth.

With her refillable water bottle in hand, Royte travels to Fryeburg, Maine, where a water-pumping operation for Nestle's Poland Spring label divides the town. In the course of her research, she also tastes fancy bottled waters with a water connoisseur, monitors her eight-year-old daughter's water intake, and conducts an informal poll of friends and acquaintances, asking whether they know where their tap water comes from. "Most people, even those who knew exactly how many miles the arugula on their plate had traveled, had no idea," she writes. Royte's own tap water comes from the famously high-quality New York City system -- a network of reservoirs that, with the blessing of the U.S. EPA, makes up the largest unfiltered water supply in the nation.

Grist recently caught up with Royte to talk about hydration myths, anti-bottle mayors, and water snobbery.

Twenty years ago, you write, bottled water was a niche market in the U.S. Today, it's a more than $10 billion business. What the heck happened? Why did Americans start drinking so much bottled water?

The simplest reason is marketing. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on advertising that either told us explicitly or implied that bottled water was better. [Bottled-water companies] used words like pure and natural, and used images of athletes and models and celebrities -- the advertisements were aspirational, they told us we'd be more like these people if we drank this product.

While this marketing juggernaut was going on, there was also, until quite recently, a total absence of criticism. There was no competition from tap water, because utilities don't have their own marketing budgets or ad budgets to tell us, "Tap water is great! Drink more tap water, and you'll be thin, and look more beautiful, and do better yoga poses."

 

http://grist.org/feature/2008/07/18/

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Star Wars photoshopping contest

Link

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Shanghainese disco bunny steals UK govt official's heart, nicks his Blackberry

A top aide to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was seduced by a hot woman he met in a Shanghai disco, who came back to his hotel room. In the morning, his (unencrypted) Blackberry was gone. Crypto: 1, Penis: 0.

The group stayed at the disco for at least two hours. One senior aide was approached by an attractive Chinese woman. The couple danced and later disappeared together.

The security official said: "In these circumstances it was not wise. Nobody knows exactly what happened after they left. But the next morning he came forward and said: "My BlackBerry is missing." The prime minister's Special Branch protection team were alerted.

Link (via /.)

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GOP Candidate Quits, Cites Broken Republican Brand

Sure, the Republican brand is broken, adrift without core principles, or at least nobody in the party will abide by what they say are their principles. So Congressional candidate Carl Mumpower has suspended his campaign in protest of the broken Republican brand. Of course, he's getting free press while his campaign is suspended.

Commentary By: Steven Reynolds

Heath Shuler, the Democratic rookie from the 11th District of North Carolina, is going to have a much easier race this November than previously predicted. His opponent, Dr. Carl Mumpower, has suspended his campaign. This has been reported in some Washington DC outlets like Politico, The Hill, and CQPolitics, but the story is told best from the 11th District and the Ashville Citizen-Times:

"I am grateful for this strong signal of unity from the District leaders and honored that my home county and the people who know me best were the first to officially get on board," Mumpower said. "When we get at least seven more county commitments out of the fifteen, then the people of WNC will know that our Republican Party organization stands for something they can count on. The campaign remains on hold until that foundation is firmly in place, and I will not yield."

In a Saturday letter to the 11th Congressional District Chair, Stephen Duncan, Mumpower announced his campaign was on hold until his party formally committed to its core principles and developed a process for holding Republican elected representatives to those principles.

Mumpower faces an uphill battle in unseating incumbent Congressman Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, who was elected in 2006. But he said Monday he felt he must take this step before proceeding with his campaign.

"I'm not going to be doing any fundraising or advertising — there won't be any active campaigning for the Republican Party," Mumpower said Monday. "I'll put things on hold until I get party officials to commit to the principles and to the process of holding elected officials accountable."

Mumpower, an Asheville City Councilman, said he was particularly troubled by a recent vote in Congress to override President Bush's veto of the Farm Bill. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., and Shuler, a Waynesville Democrat, both voted to override a bill that Mumpower says is laden with "pork and special interests."

Citing core principles of small government, fiscal restraint and stricter immigration enforcement, Mumpower said his party has strayed from what the American people want.

Oh, this could very well be a "tactic," but the reasons behind Mumpower's decision are telling. He's saying that Republicans in this country are not living up to their principles. In short, he is acknowledging that the Republican Brand is broken. Given Republicans and their hesitancy in recognizing that they've spoiled their reputation, it is also surprising that other Republicans agree with Mumpower that the Republican brand is broken:

http://allspinzone.com/wp/2008/07/17/gop-candidate-quits-cites-broken-republican-brand/

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Media Coverage of Obama and McCain: "Nuts" or a "Disgrace"?

 

By Eric Boehlert

The Beltway press has become dysfunctional, failing to see news when it happens and hyping non-stories that require no real reporting.

Journalism, by nature, is not difficult. It really isn't. Most of the key attributes for solid reporting and editing come naturally to most people; fairness, hard work, and -- most important -- common sense.

News judgment, for instance, consists mostly of editors and producers using common sense to determine, based on the limited resources at hand, which breaking events and stories should be covered, and which ones can be set aside as less important.

During the slow summer months of a presidential campaign, that judgment and that common sense is usually even easier to put into practice because, traditionally, so little happens on the campaign trail with the candidates that what ought to be covered becomes self-evident.

Yet the Beltway press corps has become so borderline dysfunctional that even the simplest tasks, such as selecting which stories to cover -- such as using common sense -- now escape most of the major players at the mainstream news organizations.

Two events in recent days reaffirmed that sad conclusion, when entire news organizations opted to throw all sorts of time and attention at what was essentially a pointless campaign-related sideshow, while simultaneously displaying blanket indifference to what should have been the campaign story of the week, if not the month or possibly the entire summer.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/91776/?page=1

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The Real Joker

 

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Officials spread false 'not a drop spilled after Katrina' talking point in support of offshore oil drilling

by Nick Langewis

Former Senator turned energy lobbyist Trent Lott (R-MS) falsely claimed, during a Tuesday MSNBC appearance in support of drilling for oil offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that Hurricane Katrina didn't cause oil spills.

"We didn't have one drop of oil [spilled] when we had the biggest hurricane in recent history, Hurricane Katrina," Lott said on Tuesday. "I think that the American people," he added, "are saying 'Look, do whatever is necessary, do it all, and do it now.'"

Former Senator and lobbyist John Breaux, a Democrat hailing from the gulf state of Louisiana, said that opponents of offshore drilling should reconsider. "We've shown that for the last sixty years you can do it safely, you can develop all natural domestic resources here in the United States, and it can be done safely."

Oil spills, in fact, numbered over 100 in the hurricane's aftermath, plaguing New Orleans and nearby areas and also contaminating the Mississippi River. The Coast Guard, MSNBC itself reported in September of 2005, estimated that 7 million gallons of oil, between 44 separate facilities around southeastern Louisiana, had been spilled as a result of the storm.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Officials_lobbyists_spread_false_not_drop_0716.html

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